A/N: My descriptive ramblings from the beach in Cali this summer. I really want reviews on this, because I didn't actually send it through a beta, and it was kind of a quickie, so I don't know if it's any good. So, let me know, even if it's a four-word review (that was my rule last time, I think... xD ), and don't be afraid to say flat out, "it sucks," if it really sucks. Cheers.

On Sea and Sky

The breeze is cold against the wetness of my skin, but the sun-baked rock is warm beneath my legs. The air carries the tiniest hit of salt. The roaring, crashing sounds of the ocean, ebbing and flowing in volume as the waves do, seem magnified a hundred times as they reverberate off the alcove’s rock walls all around me and fill the space, immersing me. The sun is shining, wonderfully warm, deliciously eye-searing in its brilliance, paling the very sky around it. Colors slowly resume further away, the pale, sun-bleached gray blending smoothly into an intense blue sky, unbroken by even a single cloud, its brilliant hue seeming to radiate as much heat as the sun. The trees are lushly verdant, their color seeming like something out of a comic book, almost too flawless and bright to exist in real life.

And the sea. The wine-dark sea, said Homer. Not for being burgundy, but for the richness and intensity of the color. The sea is blue because it reflects the sky, but the blue before me now is a reflection of nothing. There is no hint of dilution about it. And it’s a different color. It’s darker, not bright or warm, but deep, full. It’s hard to believe one is the reflection of the other. The feeling of each is so different. The sky is cheer, the pure, unfiltered joy of life. The sea—the far sea, past the waves, the deep blue part—is somehow… tranquility, calm, comfort, peace. Both are immensely beautiful, true, in a kind of heartwrenching way, because you know you’ll never have them. One is intangible, the other simply unattainable. The joy of seeing his kind of beauty, at east for me, has the merest touch of sadness to it; there is no way for me to reach the sky, and the far ocean is right there in front of me, but I know that I will never reach it, either. I say far ocean, blue ocean, because not all of the ocean is blue. Out beyond the waves it is, majestic expanse of water stretching out to the horizon that is somehow moving and glass-still at the same time. But closer to shore, the water is green, a range of green that deepens into the blue that the sea becomes at its end.

And the sea’s third color is the white of sea spray, of cresting, crashing waves. The white is the representation of the sea’s power. A blue-green wave, rearing up, is only potential. When it slams down and rushes forward, it’s the oncoming mass of whiteness, the froth the sea has worked itself into, that contains the power. And when gigantic waves crash against rocks and spray foam into the air, it seems suspended for the barest moment as it claims the space it hangs in, with all the power of the sea behind it.